Arthur Zurabyan of ART DE LEX commented on the Schneerson case involving rare Orthodox Jewish books

Arthur Zurabyan, head of international arbitration for ART DE LEX, commented on the dispute between the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Russian State Library, on the one hand, and the United States and the Library of Congress, on the other hand, about the historic book collection of Rebbe Yosef Schneerson.

Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson (1880-1950; also spelled Schneersohn) was a leading member of the Chabad branch of the Orthodox Jewish Hasidic movement in Russia and became its rebbe in 1920, during the Russian civil war. After imprisonment under the communists, he left Russia in 1928, and he eventually settled in Warsaw, Poland. In 1940, he managed to immigrate to the United States, where he continued his work in New York. While in Russia, he augmented his family library and built an impressive collection, with some of the volumes dating to the sixteenth century. The Bolshevik government confiscated it and placed it in what is now the Russian State Library. In Poland, Schneerson worked to rebuild his library, which he had to leave behind when he departed for America. It came into Nazi hands, and at the end of the Second World War, the Red Army transferred it to the Soviet Union. Today, that portion of the Schneerson collection is in the Russian military archive.

In 1994, the Library of Congress borrowed seven books from the Schneerson collection in Russia, and it renewed the loan several times. Eventually, it gave the books to the Chabad-Lubavitch Library in New York, which in 2000 refused to return the books to Russia. The Chabad-Lubavitch Library filed suit in the United States in 2004 to gain ownership of the entire collection. In 2010, the federal district court in Washington, DC, reached a verdict in favor of the Chabad-Lubavitch Library and in 2013 charged Russia USD 50,000 each day until it delivers the library. The Russian government claimed that Yosef Schneerson has no heirs and that the collection is a national treasure. In February 2013, in an attempt to diffuse the situation, Russian President Vladimir Putin transferred the branch of the Russian State Library containing the Schneerson collection of 12,000 books and 50,000 documents to the recently opened Jewish Museum and the Center of Tolerance. In May 2014, the Arbitration Court in Moscow demanded payment of USD 50,000 each day for the seven books the Library of Congress had borrowed in 1994. Diplomatic channels have failed to resolve the situation, partly because of the deteriorating relations between the two countries.

Arthur Zurabyan, head of the international arbitration desk of ART DE LEX, told the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI) that “there is no significant shift on the political level in this matter, as evidenced by the actual breakdown of talks about signing an agreement between the Russian Federation and the United States on the protection of works of art from arrest.” He added that “given the lack of an agreement on legal assistance in civil matters between the Russian Federation and the United States, executing the decision of Moscow Arbitration Court in the United States can be based only on the principle of reciprocity and comity. However, given Russia’s position on the decision in 2013 regarding the obligation to return the so-called Schneerson library, there is a very high probability that the United States will fail to recognize the [Moscow Arbitration Court’s] decision.” He noted that the Russian government could resort to seizing American property in Russia.

Vsevolod Sazonov, chairman of the Moscow Regional Bar Association, added that Russia should be cautious about lending anything to the US or countries with which the US has agreements on mutual assistance in judicial matters. Days after the Moscow Arbitration Court decision, the deputy minister of culture told journalists that joint exhibition projects between Russia and the US effectively have ceased.

The RAPSI news release about the Arbitration Court decision, with the comments of Arthur Zurabyan, is at http://rapsinews.ru/judicial_analyst/20140522/271383791.html.

Additional news items regarding the Schneerson library are at http://en.ria.ru/culture/20140526/190145890/Conflict-Over-Schneerson-Books-Affects-Russia-US-Cultural.html; http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/22/us-russia-usa-jewish-collection-idUSBREA4L14920140522; and http://rt.com/news/jewish-museum-schneerson-library-620/.

Some images, digitized volumes in the Schneerson collection, as well as information about the Schneerson collection in the Jewish Museum and the Center of Tolerance in Moscow is at http://www.jewish-museum.ru/en/pages/library.